Main menu

Jimmie Johnson dominates at Martinsville

April 6, 2013

1 of 3Jeff Gordon

Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

2 of 3Danica Patrick

Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

3 of 3Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Turns out, Clint Bowyer was dead-right on every count. “He had a faster car,” the ever-quotable driver said when asked why he couldn’t beat Jimmie Johnson on Sunday afternoon at Martinsville Speedway. “He also had the number one pit stall. And it turns out that he’s pretty good here, too.”

From early Friday morning to late Sunday afternoon, Johnson said, his team’s game plan was very basic, very old-school. “It was probably the most calm, relaxed, thought-out, mature weekend we’ve ever had as the 48 team,” he said. “We fell back on our experience and stayed committed to that. Friday (practice and qualifying) was easier to stay committed to because everybody gave me a way fast race car in qualifying trim. That made (Friday) easy.

“But as we got into Saturday for race practice, this track can play games with you. There were times we’d put up a fast lap, but didn’t have what we thought. It wouldn’t look competitive compared to other guys on track or guys adjusting their cars to the current conditions. But we stuck to our game plan and knew what we wanted in the race. We stayed patient. It was tough to do at times, but it certainly worked out well. It was a very well-executed weekend and a well-executed race today by the 48 team.”

Sunday’s most important numbers are these:

Johnson has two wins in the season’s first six races, 62 in his 405-start NASCAR Sprint Cup career and eight in 23 starts at Martinsville. He won by 0.672 seconds, a MOV that certainly would have been larger but for three cautions inside the final 50 laps that bunched the field and ate away at his leads. Johnson, who won the Daytona 500, is the season’s only two-time winner and leads Keselowski by six championship points, Dale Earnhardt Jr. by 12, Kyle Busch by 28 and Kahne and Biffle by 32.

And these numbers:

Johnson led five times for 346 laps compared to three times for 96 laps for Matt Kenseth, twice for 56 laps for Kyle Busch, and once for one lap each for Ambrose and Travis Kvapil. All told, he led in clumps of 71, 17, 119, 1, 13 and the final 138 laps, and clearly was the class of the field, regardless of who might have been ahead for a few laps at odd intervals. He never was scored worse than fourth – except perhaps briefly, as pit stops cycled through – at any point during the 500-lap race. The win was the 20th for Hendrick Motorsports at Martinsville, breaking its tie with Petty Enterprises for most wins here.

And then there was this number: zero.

That’s the number of “payback” incidents among drivers involved in the two major controversies two weeks ago at Fontana, Calif. There was nothing even remotely sinister between feuding rivals Tony Stewart and Joey Logano and nothing at all between Logano and Martin, subbing for Hamlin in the No. 11 Toyota. Late Sunday, Hamlin threw out the “layup” line and vowed to make it harder on Johnson when the tour returns in October.

Johnson stated the obvious in his post-race presser. “It was a long-fought day, but Martinsville stays the same over the years and we have a great notebook,” he said. “You just have to dig in and get into a rhythm and drive your own race and see how things unfold at the end. It was a very standard Martinsville race and I felt the best car won. It was a hard race because this track is tough to get around.”

As for the “layup” inference: “I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not Denny, it’s the Gibbs cars,” said winning crew chief Chad Knaus. “I think it’s more car than driver here for that (No. 11 Toyota) team. Look at Matt Kenseth: he couldn’t get out of his own way when he was in a Roush car here. He went out today (his first Martinsville start for Joe Gibbs Racing) and was making it happen.

“But Denny does a really good job here. He’s fantastic at the short tracks…. here and Richmond… and I hate that he’s hurt. That’s not the way we want this stuff to go down. But I still think they’ll be in the Chase and be a contender for the championship.”

After leading both of Saturday’s practice sessions Bowyer thought he had something for Johnson and Gordon. “We all live off the practice speeds and trends,” said the Toyota driver for Michael Waltrip Racing. “You watch a graph; we all see it. When we get back to the bus after practice, we look at graphs and have a good idea what we’ve got for competition and how you stack up. Certainly, I thought for once that I was a little better than the 24 (Gordon), especially early in a run. And I thought both of us were better than the 48 (Johnson).

“(But) the tide turned. (Having) that clean air all day and being able to work on the car in that clean air. I qualified bad (15th), got myself back there, got wrecked and tore up on both ends. You get up there, you’re door to door with the 48 that’s been enjoying clean sailing all day, you look at him and it’s ready to go back to the next short track. You know what you’re up against. You want to say bad luck and everything, but you make a lot of your own luck. We did a lot of things well this week, but missed in qualifying and ultimately paid the price.”

Gordon, embracing his best finish of the season, was happy that Goodyear brought a tire that made the demand more from drivers than it sometimes has. He was much better on long runs, when tires began to wear. Alas, the three late cautions inside the final 50 laps and the final eight-lap dash to the finish took away any shot at winning or finishing second.

“As the race went on and the tire wear got a little better and we made adjustments, we were very competitive,” said Gordon, a seven-time Martinsville winner. “I like the tire wear fall-off. I like how you’ve got to manage how hard you push at the beginning; how the grip level goes away; how you have to use your foot to keep from spinning the tires. That’s the old-school Martinsville I grew up with, and I like it.

“It brings more of the driver into play, even though it seemed the air pressure helped that. I’d like to see that more. Durability is a big deal, especially on the bigger, higher-speed tracks, so they’re limited on what they can do, especially on the repaves. But on these older tracks, it’s encouraging to know they can build a tire that withstands long runs, but also falls off and wears a little bit. I’d like to see more of that.”